I mostly do surround sound in family rooms - as opposed to dedicated theaters - and am trying to assess the significance of Atmos for my installations.

How many view Atmos as a "must have?" in non-dedicated rooms?

How much do you think going from, say, a 5.1 setup to a 5.1.2 or 5.1.4 setup improves the user experience?

More then one sub def helps. Atmos in non dedicated rooms.... well if room design and acoustics are still good in that room for Atmos then sure it could be worthwhile.

Most people haven’t experienced even a good 5.1 system let alone Atmos so a lot are happy to just have that imho but a good Atmos setup can blow it away.

If it is a theater is gets Atmos for sure. Whether or not it is a dedicated theater or open media room doesn't matter. The cost delta is nominal so it just gets designed that way.

For a family room it depends on what the client wants, and the layout of the room. I ALWAYS bring it up and suggest a demo at our showroom.

I personally think Atmos is rad. I still prefer to use bluray discs when watching movies in my own media room and built it last winter in 7.2.2

Entirely dependent on the client and the space.

In a world of playing discs, maybe you would answer one way.

In today's world of watching videos on TV channels and streaming videos, does it make Atmos less viable or worthwhile?

Atmos is not elusive to physical media.

Amazon and Netflix Both have programming with Atmos

Vudu supports Atmos

The new AppleTV is atmos capable and will be turned on in a future update.

Kaleidascape has a large selection of Atmos content for their 4k servers.

I honestly cant imagine a scenario where an atmos track and 2-4 more speakers would be a negative in any sort of surround sound system.

the question would be why would you not add atmos? atmos should be the rule, not the exception.

If the room lays out correctly sure why not. If the room is a huge compromise to even do 5.1 then I dont even bring it up.

For atmos ,

It would have to be a dedicated theater over 50k . Below that you are taking away money from the Most important parts of the theater.

What speaker configuration are you doing for Atmos? It seems to require ear level surrounds and ceiling speakers directly listener. I did this in a media room, which had a couch near the back room and I found the ceiling and rear speakers looked too close together using dolby recommendation for angles. Do you place ceiling speakers more forward than directly above listener? I'd prefer not to place rear speakers at ear level because visually I don't think it looks good.

If the budget and room allow. Nothing wrong with a set of front height speakers, or rear height speakers. The content is the issue, processing takes care of that. I really mostly watch Fios in my 7 channel theater and turn on processing for the rear channels to work.

if not speakers, what would that be?